Determination of 25 Common and New Food Additives in Beverages by Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography

A method for determination of 25 common and new food additives (patent blue V and advantame) in beverages by UHPLC. The sample (2.5 g) was taken and its volume was made up to 25 mL with 50% (volume fraction) methanol solution. The mixed solution was shaken for 2 min by vortex, extracted by ultrasound for 20 min, and passed through a 0.45 μm PTFE filtering membrane. The filtrate obtained was analyzed by UHPLC. Mixed solutions composed of methanol and 0.02 mol·L^-1 ammonium acetate solution with various volume ratios were used as mobile phase for gradient elution on a ACQUITY UPLC^® HSS T3 chromatographic column. The food additives separated were detected by photodiode array detector at multi-wavelengths. The results showed that linear relationships between mass concentrations of 25 food additives and their corresponding peak areas were kept in definite ranges, with detection limits (3S/N) in the range of 0.2-3.0 mg·kg^-1. Test for recovery was made on actual samples by standard addition method, giving values of recovery in the range of 82.1%-111%, and RSDs (n=6) of the determined values ranged from 0.19% to 3.1%. The proposed method was applied to analysis of 7 fruit and vegetable beverages and 3 tea beverages, caffeine (95.3, 98.4, 124.9 mg·kg^-1) was detected in 3 tea beverages, and acesulfame (20.2 mg·kg^-1) was detected in 1 fruit and vegetable beverage, and sorbic acid (15.8, 18.9 mg·kg^-1) was detected in 2 fruit and vegetable beverages.